An English Seaside Town

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Yes it's (KL) a port isn't it, not a resort. Nice train ride from London through the Fens.

― David (David), Thursday, 29 April 2004 14:02 (twenty years ago) link

I wonder if anyone has ever gone to Beachy Head to kill themselves, having successfully blanked out the thoughts of what it might do to their friends and family, but then turned around at the last minute on the grounds of not wanting to upset the local residents.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 29 April 2004 14:03 (twenty years ago) link

I doubt it!

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 29 April 2004 14:03 (twenty years ago) link

All my favourite seaside towns are Welsh. Harlech, Aberystwyth, Llandudno, Porthmadog, Fairbourne...I don't think anywhere in England beats those. I spent most of my childhood holidays in Barmouth, which is about as perfect as seaside towns get, I think, and has possibly the best chip shop in the world.

I have a fondness for Blackpool and Skegness, but if I want to go to the seaside I would always rather go to Wales. I've not been to the south coast much, I can't picture any towns there except Bournemouth, which is okay.

― Cathy (Cathy), Thursday, 29 April 2004 14:07 (twenty years ago) link

http://img43.photobucket.com/albums/v133/cathyleech/barmouth1.jpg

Ah, Barmouth. This thread is making me plan summer holidays.

― Cathy (Cathy), Thursday, 29 April 2004 14:08 (twenty years ago) link

Beachy Head IS in Eastbourne. Well, kind of above it and to the west a bit.

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 29 April 2004 14:09 (twenty years ago) link

I went to Beacy Head recently but didn't jump off. Quite a feat when you consider I support West Ham.

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Thursday, 29 April 2004 14:11 (twenty years ago) link

Archel - I know... that's why the idea of sitting round Eastbourne waiting to die seemed so silly.

Is the bottom of Beachy Head just rocks and sea? Someone should concrete over the bottom bit and put a nice cafe there, that'd stop people. Either that or a comically-placed branch half way down to catch people.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Thursday, 29 April 2004 14:12 (twenty years ago) link

Or a trampoline!

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 29 April 2004 14:16 (twenty years ago) link

Actually a lot of people who jump from beachy head don't 'succeed' because it isn't like a sheer drop and you CAN just get stuck on a grassy ledge halfway down.

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 29 April 2004 14:16 (twenty years ago) link

I thought I might make it to the bottom of this thread with no-one having mentioned Cromer -- but not quite.

Still, Cromer: the pier, the great stone seafront, the bookshops, the pubs, the fish & chips, the memories, the storms and rain. All the usual things you have all been on about. What else?

― the pinefox, Thursday, 29 April 2004 17:57 (twenty years ago) link

http://www.tractortown.fsnet.co.uk/47s/47817%20Dawlish.jpg

I walk along this wall every day on my way to the train station.

― Sick Nouthall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 29 April 2004 18:01 (twenty years ago) link

The breakwater on the far left of the picture is where I stood and listened to "Blinded By The Lights" on my way to the pub on friday night, and watched all the street lights reflect and jigger off the sea. Twas quite byootifool. And freaky. Even standing still I felt like I was gonna fall over.

― Sick Nouthall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 29 April 2004 18:03 (twenty years ago) link

Nick, where is that?

I had a lovely time in Scarborough and Whitby years ago.

― Michael White (Hereward), Thursday, 29 April 2004 18:05 (twenty years ago) link

That's Dawlish, in Devon, about 9 miles down the river&coast from Exeter.

― Sick Nouthall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 29 April 2004 18:07 (twenty years ago) link

And here's a bit of our freaky cliff.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~keizee/images/Dawlish_1a.jpg

― Sick Nouthall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 29 April 2004 18:08 (twenty years ago) link

http://www.uksouthwest.co.uk/dawlish/dawlish.jpg

It's a pretty fucking spectaculr bit of coastline, actually. From the sea it looks alien.

― Sick Nouthall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 29 April 2004 18:10 (twenty years ago) link

Teignmouth is less spectacular, due to its scraggy pier.

http://www.torquayengland.com/566x425TeignmouthPier2.jpg

― Sick Nouthall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 29 April 2004 18:12 (twenty years ago) link

Bugger seaside towns, mind - go to Dartmoor and swim in the river dart at Spitchwick. it might be colder, but it's amazing.

http://www.pepes.force9.co.uk/stock-photos/spitchwick.JPG

― Sick Nouthall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 29 April 2004 18:14 (twenty years ago) link

I had a thread on Margate a few months back when HSA and I went there to check out an art gallery... it's grim. But full of displaced artists from Hoxton. Bizarre. Plus, the caves were great. We met the lady who runs the Shell Grotto but we didn't get that far out, and besides, she wouldn't have been there to take us on a tour as she was at the opening!

I love the Isle of Wight, especially Ventnor. It's weird and creepy and strange without feeling rough.

I really want to go to Whitby. Someone from HSA's department went to the Goth Festival there and said it was lovely. The bits I saw on Time Team or whichever archeology programme dug it up looked lovely.

― Super-Kate (kate), Thursday, 29 April 2004 18:28 (twenty years ago) link

My local pub was *dead* last weekend, because all its regulars are goths, and were in Whitby.

I'm from Cleethorpes. The sea is brown there. Here's a picture, admittedly on a foggy day.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 30 April 2004 08:26 (twenty years ago) link

I've been to Cleethorpes. My girlf's from Grimsby. I seem to recall a very bad club.

― Matt (Matt), Friday, 30 April 2004 08:30 (twenty years ago) link

I went to Cleethorpes when I was a spotty child and we saw Bob Todd walking down the beach. My mum was attacked by Emu at the local theatre.

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Friday, 30 April 2004 08:31 (twenty years ago) link

Near Whitby, of course, is Robin Hood's Bay:

http://www.north-yorkshire-moors.freeserve.co.uk/Bay2.jpg

http://www.middlewoodfarm.fsnet.co.uk/openings.jpg

http://www.jorgetutor.com/greatbritain/inglaterra/ne/robinhoodbay/robinhoodbay1.jpg

http://www.eimc.brad.ac.uk/~ijpalmer/EIMCWhitby2002/RobinHood06.jpg

...which has mondo fossils just lying around on the beach. It's ace. But very twee indeed.

― Liz :x (Liz :x), Friday, 30 April 2004 08:34 (twenty years ago) link

Matt, was it you who said that your girlf used to compete in the Grimsby Recorder Festival?

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 30 April 2004 08:37 (twenty years ago) link

I liked plymouth (at least I think it was plymouth - i got a ferry to france from there. does that sound like plymouth?) it had a depressed seaside town thing, and a town centre that looked very like the horrible/beautiful town centres of west of scotland towns.

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Friday, 30 April 2004 08:38 (twenty years ago) link

Cromer's newsagents stock an astonishingly wide range of porn.

― Ricardo (RickyT), Friday, 30 April 2004 08:42 (twenty years ago) link

Crab-related?

― Liz :x (Liz :x), Friday, 30 April 2004 08:44 (twenty years ago) link

My psychotic aunt lives in Cromer.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 30 April 2004 08:47 (twenty years ago) link

Liz, oddly not.

― Ricardo (RickyT), Friday, 30 April 2004 08:49 (twenty years ago) link

this thread makes me sad for reasons i can't explain

― Dave Amos, Friday, 30 April 2004 09:42 (twenty years ago) link

Anything with fossils automatically gets my vote.

― Super-Kate (kate), Friday, 30 April 2004 09:45 (twenty years ago) link

On the subject of beach huts, doesn't Robert Wyatt live in a beach hut... in Skegness or somewhere?

― Charles Dexter (Holey), Friday, 30 April 2004 10:04 (twenty years ago) link

She may have done, Caitlin. I shall ask her.

― Matt (Matt), Friday, 30 April 2004 13:00 (twenty years ago) link

I lived in Brighton for a year. I loved being by the sea and I loved the Full Moon (or is the half moon?) bar - that was cool. I didn't much like the architecture or the insufferably smug inhabitants but I guess nowhere's perfect.

My favourite English seaside town is Lyme Regis.

― metalmickey, Friday, 30 April 2004 15:23 (twenty years ago) link

In summer 1994 my family and I went to Bognor Regis for a daytrip. We ate chips by the seafront. Within fifteen minutes of our arrival an IRA bomb went off in the town. We went home. Not my fondest teenage memory...

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 30 April 2004 17:04 (twenty years ago) link

I cannot easily believe that anyone hasn't been to Whitby... [yet, I've never been to Cromer; may partly be to do with the distance factor] If you haven't been, get packing... :) It's probably the holiday place I've been to most often, partly as it's relatively near; i.e. on the same north-eastern coast as Sunderland where I have lived. But also, as it is so evocative a place.

― Tom May (Tom May), Friday, 30 April 2004 20:07 (twenty years ago) link

i have been to Whitby. we took a boat trip and bought fresh crab amongst other things. it were grand.

― stevem (blueski), Saturday, 1 May 2004 00:40 (twenty years ago) link

Man, I gotta second pinefox on Cromer. Ain't nothin' like a rainy June day, a princess from Luxemborg and a huge fucking spliff in Cromer.

― The Second Drummer Drowned (Atila the Honeybun), Saturday, 1 May 2004 00:42 (twenty years ago) link

I wouldn't know about #2 and #3, but I agree about the rainy June day.

― the pinefox, Saturday, 1 May 2004 12:37 (twenty years ago) link

I like Liz's last photo very much. It evokes the British seaside experience better than anything else I have seen.

― N. (nickdastoor), Saturday, 1 May 2004 13:26 (twenty years ago) link

one year passes...

cromer

― charltonlido (gareth), Monday, 18 July 2005 12:46 (eighteen years ago) link

five years pass...

What's Portsmouth like? I'm contemplating heading down there for a weekend, particularly to see the ships and the victory.

― F-Unit (Ste), Tuesday, 12 October 2010 13:39 (thirteen years ago) link

it's a shithole.

but the old ships are cool. worth a daytrip not a weekend imo.

― jabba hands, Tuesday, 12 October 2010 15:03 (thirteen years ago) link

^^^southampton fan

― markers you think (acoleuthic), Tuesday, 12 October 2010 15:04 (thirteen years ago) link

ha, it's a fair cop. happy to admit that southampton is also a shithole.

― jabba hands, Tuesday, 12 October 2010 15:10 (thirteen years ago) link

cheers, noted

― F-Unit (Ste), Tuesday, 12 October 2010 15:43 (thirteen years ago) link

seven years pass...

is Portsmouth really just a shithole? I was thinking of taking a ferry up there next month, just for a couple of days, to look around (and tbh to buy some british candies before brexit makes those hard to come by on the continent).

― droit au butt (Euler), Saturday, 22 September 2018 11:12 (five years ago) link

It certainly has that reputation. Plus it's full of drunken sailors, earl-y in the morning and 24/7.

― Zach Same (Tom D.), Saturday, 22 September 2018 11:20 (five years ago) link

I am currently standing at the end of Hastings pier in the rain, guarding some balloons.

― Colonel Poo, Saturday, 22 September 2018 11:59 (five years ago) link

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